APPENDIX 6
SPEECH BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR AT THE OPENING OF THE KWUN TONG COMMUNITY CENTRE ON 20TH FEBRUARY, 1964
"This is the third of a series of community centres to have been opened within the last three years, and it is the second of the three to be built with the aid of generous dona- tions which the people of the United Kingdom have made. I had the pleasure of opening the first of these in 1962 at Tsuen Wan.
'It may be timely to remind ourselves what we are trying to do in these community centres. Those who visit Wong Tai Sin or the Princess Alexandra Centre at Tsuen Wan will go away with quite a variety of impressions. Some may take away a memory of the generosity of warm-hearted people in Great Britain and in the United States of America whose gifts of money made possible these handsome buildings. Some may think of the tidy picture of organization and symmetry bringing together in harmony so many diverse activities and interests. Some may see a refuge and release for recreation to which bus- tling, bright-eyed people can escape from the confines of their homes in this conurbation where the press of people and of space alike deny room to relax, to play games, to practise a hobby. And I am sure that there will be some who think that this is all window-dressing, something to distract the minds of these same visitors from the materialism of so much of reconstructed Hong Kong and from the darker corners of the older, congested parts of our cities. The sentimental, the cynics and, indeed, many others as well will not have taken in the whole picture which is the true one. The social workers in the field of community or- ganization are aiming their sights much higher-at nothing less than the creation of a community spirit among the milling, disparate crowds who have poured into these new towns from many contrasting points of departure. I mean, in human terms, that these so- cial workers are striving to encourage individuals and families to feel at home in the new environment, to be good neighbours and to be good citizens of Hong Kong. The people in the estates have come here in search of work and shelter, but the social workers know that it takes more than just such basic security to make something both dignified and tri- umphant out of industrial life, and so they reach out into the homes, they aim to help every manner of group and society to grow up and to come together. They try to ignite the enthusiasms of the individual, the enthusiasms which can lead to the outward expres- sion of the questing human spirit; and yet always they work with an eye to the eventual new community.
'You may well ask, "Yes, but are they succeeding?". It takes more than a decade to build a nation, as some of the new nations are now finding. To create a local community spirit may be much easier than that, but it still takes time, and it will certainly take some years yet. I can only state here and now my own belief, which, needless to say the workers concerned themselves share, that they will succeed; they are only likely to fail if publicly expressed opinion in Hong Kong does not wish them to succeed and, by encouraging Doubting Thomases, discourages these vital dedicated few.
'Because this is no work for the enthusiasts who want to help but can only give them- selves part-time; devotion, dedication and dogged application are not sufficient; to them we must add proper skills and training. These you must have if you mean to help energetic individualists engaged themselves in a full-time battle with their own private economic problems, to help such people to broaden their visions and play a part in the wider family.
'I can see an interesting and promising future in the social welfare sector of social service in Hong Kong for those young people who deliberately choose this career in the next few years and see in it a calling. They will have to become professionals, because social welfare is no longer a matter of condescension, of giving out a few dollars and hoping, maybe, in this way, to contract out of one's obligations to one's neighbours. We need a scientific
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